Four How-Tos

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. Alison Green has some thoughts on what to do about being repeatedly proselytized to while undergoing medical procedures:

The tech is representing the medical practice and the doctor; she's not there to proselytize, and you're not there to be proselytized to. It would be wildly inappropriate under any circumstances, but the fact that she persisted after you asked her to stop makes it even worse.

Tell your doctor what happened. Say it was frequent and persistent, and she didn't stop after you asked her to, and say that you don't come there to be proselytized at.

Some commenters recommend going to professional bodies or regulatory agencies if speaking to the doctor isn't enough. That has merit, but I'd also switch providers after that, if possible.

2. I dislike shoe laces because of how frequently they come undone, and double knots give me the opposite problem. I usually go for loafers or the new type of tennis shoe that doesn't require tying, but the next time I have to deal with laces, I'm trying the Berluti knot, which looks easy to learn, and will both stay tied and be easy to release.

3. If you cook, you might sometimes have to deal with wilted scallions. A MyRecipes post can help with that:

If your scallions do start to wilt and lose that crisp texture, you can shock them back to life. "Soak root ends in cold water for an hour to revive," explains Gunders. (Pro tip? Putting wilted produce in cold water is an easy way to bring a lot of different vegetables and herbs back to life.)

I don't have this problem often, but if you do, the same post also has tips on preventing this altogether.

4. Someone gave me a gift membership to AARP, which caused my junk mail to go from zero to sixty in no time flat.

This induced me to discover that there is a way to cut down on junk mail akin to the National Do Not Call Registry.

I think I'll give that a try.

-- CAV

Use 'Company Ready' to Get to 'You Ready'

Over at the Unfuck Your Habitat home cleaning site is a post whose general sentiment I agree with, but to which I will add my two cents on implementation.

Yes. "You Ready" is better than "Company Ready" as an overall goal for home cleanliness for moral and practical reasons -- not to mention inspiring some thought on the role of altruism in causing the cycle of messiness and panic cleaning this post alludes to.

But I disagree with bolded part of the otherwise strong closing:

Focus on making your house "you ready." Bring it, gradually, up to your standards of cleanliness. Make it so that you're comfortable, and so that you enjoy looking around your home. When you reach that point, your house will always be company ready. You're the most important person who will step through your door. Try to make your living space reflect that. [bold added]

Sometimes life will get in the way of that.

For example, my wife recently invited a colleague and her young family over to our home since we're along a Mardi Gras parade route. We're in the middle of moving our daughter out of our downstairs guest room and into her permanent room upstairs and not fully out of our moving boxes. This was on top of us being very cluttered from a busy period.

This would have been embarrassing on short notice, but there was enough lead time that it was easy to combine the push to get the house uncluttered again with getting a few things in better shape to move our daughter and -- my big win here -- finally getting the area around our side entrance straightened out.

The side area was cluttered, but workable enough that I could prioritize other things, but I was always low-grade annoyed with it. Now, it has a functioning landing zone for the kids to put their school things and shoes away, and the coat closet, now being easy to reach, can keep the coat rack uncluttered. Oh, and my daughter's trombone has its own little corner now, and won't be getting knocked over anymore.

More generally, I think some amount of tidying is probably always necessary ahead of any lengthy visit, but this will decrease over time.

As part of prepping for guests and gradually getting one's house up to standards, I like to approach every tidying-up as a chance to make a big improvement I've been wanting, but haven't gotten around to.

-- CAV

P.S. I thought of another issue regarding that area I straightened out: One can acclimatize to a mess and become "blind" to it over time. If I recall correctly, the author of UFYH recommends using photographs to overcome this, but I think the prospect of guests coming can help cure this kind of "blindness," too.

Trump's 'Golden Age' Comes Early to Idaho

Cropped screenshot of ICE Activity Tracker taken by the author about 8:00 a.m. on February 11, 2026.

A town in Idaho, whose residents went 91% for Trump in 2024, is being devastated by ICE raids, which are hardly exclusive to large, blue cities. A quick check on the crowd-sourced ICE Activity Tracker, as illustrated at right, is all it takes to show the nationwide scope of the raids.

Masked thugs recently conducted a "gambling" raid on a racetrack near the town. Among other things, the "agents" asked everyone where they were from, set off flash-bang grenades, ziptied children, and rounded up scores of the farmworkers locals regularly hired for harvests

Now that the town's field workers have all gone into hiding or been deported, it faces an uncertain and wary future:

John Carter runs a security company that worked at the racetrack, and he's a Trump supporter himself. But what he saw that day shook him up. He watched agents point automatic rifles at people and set off flash-bang grenades while arresting Ivan Tellez, who allegedly operated the track.

...

Carter's own 14-year-old daughter was there. She got zip-tied, too. He saw officers pointing guns at teenagers. The whole thing felt less like a law enforcement operation and more like a military raid.

...

The raid left a mark that goes beyond the people who got deported. Gross mentioned that now, when anyone -- Hispanic or not -- sees a black SUV driving through town, they freeze up. There's this constant low-level anxiety hanging over Wilder. Alex Zamora, the school superintendent, summed up how a lot of people feel: 'There was just such confusion. What in the world is going on in Wilder?'

The farmers are staring down a real problem. Without enough workers, crops could end up rotting in the fields. The people who know how to do this work are either gone or too frightened to come out.

The piece adds, "Supporting strict immigration laws is one thing when it's abstract. It's another thing entirely when your neighbour gets deported and there's nobody left to harvest the fields."

Maybe consider thinking about what your slogans mean in practice, next time. Perhaps look harder at the person you imagine you want in power, and who he surrounds himself with.

While it may be true that Trump punishes his political enemies, it is also apparent that he pretty much treats everyone the same rotten way, sooner or later.

As tempted as I am to smirk and say, You asked for it, the fact remains that their problem is our problem. Perhaps a few Trump supporters here and there will wake up before it's too late.

-- CAV

P.S. "Irishman detained by ICE agents describes 'torture' after five months in prison camp despite living in US 20 years, having an American wife and no criminal record." Hispanic or not, indeed.

Trump Doing It Again in Texas

Donald Trump, who has a history -- once memorably summed up in "Donald Trump Is a Loser", by John Sununu -- of screwing his own party out of Senate seats, is up to his old M.O. in Texas:

As a result of Trump's reluctance to endorse, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas has been drawn into a nasty, and expensive, primary challenge with MAGA fave Ken Paxton. In September last year, Team Cornyn rolled out an ad campaign coloring his scandal-prone fellow Republican as crooked. Months later, and Trump has not endorsed Cornyn or the Texas attorney general who is hoping to oust him.

...

If Paxton were the Republican nominee, it would take a lot more money than usual to keep that Texas Senate seat. People involved in the race estimate it would cost about $100 million extra, because Paxton would need heavy advertising to stay competitive.

Internal polling, the Post reported, showed Cornyn leading Paxton. Paxton, crucially, is also lagging behind Texas state Rep. James Talarico and U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett on the Democratic side. Talarico or Crockett winning a general election would be a costly misstep caused by Trump's inaction, if it were to come to fruition. [links omitted, bold added]

As the article indicates, Trump is also screwing over a Senator in neighboring Louisiana, although the state party there changed an election law to help the "man" who violated his Hippocratic Oath en route to confirming Bobby Kennedy as HHS Secretary.

The piece leads with the claim, "Republicans secretly fuming with Trump as midterm disaster looms."

Why not all come out in the open about this now, before it's too late to save your own skins and perhaps your party? The people, not Trump and his cronies, are your bosses, after all.

It is a shame both parties can't lose this year. The Dems are awful, but if I can't see anyone in his party getting control of Trump, I guess I'll have to look to the Democrats this November.

-- CAV

A ... Superb Owl ... Palate-Cleanser

To skip the rant, follow the very last link below...

This year, I half-watched the Super Bowl -- or the "Superb Owl" as I like to call it -- and was somehow blissfully unaware of the high dudgeon about the halftime show -- until my daughter mentioned that an "anti-Trump singer" would be performing.

A quick search refreshed my vague memory about some counter-show by MAGA, and I assumed that the official show would be a left-wing singer (natch) who would be more insufferable than usual. To be fair, it could have been anyone, and MAGA would carry on the same way if only Trump pouted about it enough.

(For the record, I have no issue with a Puerto Rican singing at the Super Bowl, and he has freedom of speech. I am not sure I'd agree with much of what he had to say, but even if I did, I don't watch sports events hoping to be harrangued about politics. That said, the left is on the better side of ICE/immigration, but is trying its best to find a way to make it off-putting, while packaging it with anti-Americanism.)

Neither "side" in this squabble speaks for me or understands America.

I didn't care much about the game and spent much of the first half and most of half-time cooking dinner. What little I saw of the halftime show was slightly less annoying than others of recent memory in part because I don't understand much Spanish, which I took to be a feature rather than a bug.

The counter-show apparently had even less artistic merit and was equally predictable sermonizing from Turning Point USA. I am not a Christian and I don't care for Kid Rock or country music. Ugh. At least one of Bad Bunny's songs had an interesting rhythm.

As a palate cleanser that has the virtue of being an effective, thought-provoking comment on ICE/immigration, let me recommend Harry Binswanger's latest Substack post, which asks and succinctly answers the following question: "Which is the greater threat -- illegal aliens or ICE agents?"

I suspect that at least one of my Trump-supporting brothers boycotted the Super Bowl this year, and I am impressed enough that I might point it to him, it is that directly on point in only about 300 words.

Either way, this is one to have in the quiver considering how dangerous these lawless, masked people are. Any thoughtful, persuadable person who is concerned about this issue would appreciate the clarity on offer.

-- CAV

Four Things to Review

A Friday Hodgepodge

When I stumble across possibly useful things on the web, I'll bookmark them with a to-do tag to look at later. Here are a few you might also find useful.

1. If you need to get a quick weather forecast for the week ahead, the National Weather Service is good, as long as you're in the U.S.

But for anywhere else, you might feel stuck with how slow and resource-hogging the bigger commercial sites have gotten.

You might find timeanddate (same example for comparison, but scroll down for week; here's Paris) to be a relief if you want your "quick check" of the weather to be quick.

The site also provides lots of other information, like sunrise/sunset, time zone information, and moon phases.

2. They aren't all underground websites (unless can't find with Google is your criterion), but many of these "useful underground websites" look promising.

I didn't find timeanddate here, although I bet it shows up, and I can't vouch for many of these as going through this remains on the to-do list...

3. I was a submariner in a past life, and on that basis alone would recommend going through The Rickover Corpus, which is an archive of the speeches and memos of the father of America's nuclear navy.

The commenters on this thread at Hacker News would seem to agree that it is worthwhile.

4. On some preliminary inspection, I'm not sure how useful this thread on tricks of the trade that folks in technology think they "took too long to learn" will be. That said, a couple of things keep it on the list for perusal during a walk some time, so I'll log it here, too.

-- CAV

'Out of Touch' Advice Can Be Worse Than Rude

Over at Ask a Manager, someone asks about a bit of advice I once got twenty years ago and also dismissed: Show up at potential employers and hand-deliver a printed-out resume!

While almost anyone hearing this will laugh and move on, it is worthwhile to read Alison Green's complete demolition because it shows the value of taking the time to understand and evaluate advice

Green replies in part:

First, they're highly likely to just tell you that you need to apply online ... because you do in fact need to apply online. As has been the case for a long time now, most organizations use electronic applicant tracking systems. If your application isn't in there, it's not getting considered.

Second, with the rise in remote work, a ton of people don't even work at companies' main addresses anymore. There may not be anyone involved in hiring for the position even physically there. And even if they're there, they're generally going to be very busy and aren't going to come out and talk to you just because you randomly showed up holding a resume -- so anyone you do talk to is incredibly unlikely to have anything to do with hiring for that particular job.

Third, it will still annoy the crap out of most people involved in hiring and make you look naive/out of touch at best ... and at worst, like you don't think instructions apply to you. Their instructions are there for a reason. [bold added]

Alison goes a bit further to note that the time spent on such an exercise would be better-spent doing much more effective things.

In addition to showing a disregard for the potential employer, blindly following the advice would hinder one's own progress in other ways on top of that.

Sometimes, one can see how ridiculous an idea is by imagining how implementing it would work out, but if in doubt, do as the letter-writer did and seek out a more experienced third party you respect.

-- CAV